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Hindrances to the new teaching goals of College English in China

Being contextually blind and linguistically groundless, current tertiary ELT policy needs to be redefined

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 December 2015

Hui Du  and
Hongdi Guan
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Extract

College English refers to a type of English course offered to non-English majors at tertiary level in mainland China. In recent years, however, College English has been criticised as ‘deaf and dumb English’ (Wu, 2004; Zhang, 2002) because of Chinese students’ perceived weaknesses in listening and speaking. As Zhang (2002), Director of the Department of Higher Education in the Chinese Ministry of Education (MOE), explains, ‘Chinese university students can neither speak English nor understand it when they hear the language spoken’ (p. 4). To improve the situation, Zhang urges that ‘[w]hile reading has to be reduced properly, listening and speaking should be increased in College English textbooks’ (ibid.: 5). In other words, it is listening and speaking rather than reading that should be emphasised.

Type
Research Article
Information
English Today , Volume 32 , Issue 1 , March 2016 , pp. 12 - 17
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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